Pope Leo XIV: 'machines are tools, not persons', and he encourages states meeting in Geneva to take steps toward banning lethal autonomous weapons

Pope Leo XIV told participants in a Vatican meeting on artificial intelligence on Friday 30 October that "machines are tools, not persons", and said: "I encourage the States meeting in Geneva in November to take concrete steps toward banning lethal autonomous weapons." The address was published by the Holy See Press Office the same day.

The meeting

The bulletin says the Pope received in audience the participants in "the meeting organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute", titled "The future of AI: a dialogue between the Vatican and the scientific world on the developments and applications of intelligent technologies".

He recalled that Pope Francis, addressing G7 leaders in June 2024, "affirmed that no machine should ever be entrusted with the decision to take a human life", then offered "five considerations in particular".

The five points, in order

1. The future is not fixed. "First, the future of artificial intelligence is not pre-determined." He said people have the responsibility to "guide, change and, when necessary, reject its applications", and that the question is not only what AI can do but what purpose it should serve. He said a reliable system that serves people is worth more than an exceptionally powerful one whose consequences cannot be adequately foreseen or controlled.
2. Tools, not persons. "Second, machines are tools, not persons." He went on: "Today, some propose granting these systems rights, or even legal personhood. Such an approach risks obscuring human responsibility and leaving those who suffer harm to confront a faceless entity."
3. Some decisions must not be delegated. "When a person is placed on a target list or entered into a border control database, there is a danger that he or she will be reduced to a mere data point." He said "Decisions affecting human life, freedom and the use of force must always remain subject to effective, informed and responsible human oversight", that artificial intelligence must be "disarmed", and then made the Geneva appeal.
4. The common good. "Fourth, intelligent technologies must be directed toward the common good." He said they "must never become ends in themselves or serve merely the interests of a privileged few".
5. Institutions. Describing it as "perhaps the most urgent" challenge, he said: "What we currently need are institutions capable of putting these principles into practice, particularly effective international institutions that can safeguard the global common good". That, he said, "calls for shared standards, independent oversight and clear mechanisms of accountability".

What meets in Geneva in November

The address does not name the meeting. The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs says the Seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) "will take place from 16 to 20 November 2026 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva". The conference page lists a "Proposal on the mandate and modalities of the future work of the GGE on LAWS", the CCW's expert group on lethal autonomous weapons systems. On our reading, this is the meeting the Pope meant, but the Vatican text does not say so.

The conference follows a non-binding text on lethal autonomous weapons agreed in Geneva in September, which campaigners said had been watered down in the final hours, and an August appeal from the UN Secretary-General and the Red Cross, who called the November conference the clearest path to moving toward negotiations. In the US, a House bill introduced in July, which is only a bill and has an uncertain path, would require human control of intentionally lethal autonomous weapons.

The UK's stated position

The Ministry of Defence set out the UK's position in a policy paper, Ambitious, safe, responsible, published in June 2022. It says "the United Kingdom does not possess fully autonomous weapon systems and has no intention of developing them", and that the UK opposes "the creation and use of systems that would operate without meaningful and context-appropriate human involvement throughout their lifecycle". It says "the best approach is to focus on building norms of use and positive obligations", and that the CCW expert group "will continue to be our primary avenue for such discussions".

A government report on international humanitarian law, dated October 2024, restates that position and says "The United Kingdom welcomes the strengthened mandate of the LAWS GGE." We did not find a UK statement for the November conference.

Why it matters

On our reading, the address is an explicit encouragement to states to take steps toward a ban, made 17 days before a conference that lists the expert group's future work among its documents. In the Pope's text, the weapons point and the personhood point rest on the same idea: that responsibility must stay with humans. On our reading, the UK's published position also centres on human involvement, but describes norms of use and positive obligations, not a ban, as the best approach.